From that page we manually extract the hash
and that does contain the famous genesis block string:
The JSON clarifies that the data is encoded in the
000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f
and then:
wget -O 0.hex https://blockchain.info/block/000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f?format=hex
xxd -p -r 0.hex
EThe Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks
script
field of the transaction input
:
{
{
"script":"04ffff001d0104455468652054696d65732030332f4a616e2f32303039204368616e63656c6c6f72206f6e206272696e6b206f66207365636f6e64206261696c6f757420666f722062616e6b73"
The extra
where:
E
(0x45 in ASCII) in EThe Times
is just extra noise required by the script, we can break things up as:
04ffff001d0104 45 5468652054696d65732030332f4a616e2f32303039204368616e63656c6c6f72206f6e206272696e6b206f66207365636f6e64206261696c6f757420666f722062616e6b73
54
isT
- the
04ffff001d0104
part just doesn't show up on the terminal because it is not made of any printable characters.
The initial
04
is OP_RETURN
TODO what is actual the meaning of the
ffff001d010445
part?TODO the
output
of the transaction has a jumbled script, likely just a regular output to get things going, can't be arbitrary like input.The message proves a minimal starting date for the first mine.
And it hints that one of Bitcoin's motivation was the financial crisis of 2007-2008, where banks were given bailouts by the government to not go under, which many people opposed as the crisis was their own fault in the first place.
A notable related stab is taken at len Sassaman tribute.